Loss of police units could a≠ect crime

colorado springs» The loss of the police department’s gang and ”impact” units could lead to rising crime.

The two proactive units worked almost exclusively to find and arrest prolific offenders, thereby decreasing drug trafficking and property crimes in the community. Without them, the department loses a lot, according to statistics obtained by The Gazette through public records requests.

The impact unit made 1,900 felony and misdemeanor arrests and recovered more than $1 million of stolen vehicles and $52,000 of stolen property this year through Sept. 17, records show.

Almost $1 million of drugs and 95 weapons, including 47 guns, also have been removed from the streets.

Through August, the gang unit made 122 arrests, recovered $3.5 million of drugs and 110 guns, 15 of which were assault-style weapons, statistics show.

Those arrests came to a screeching halt in September when Police Chief Peter Carey announced a reorganization to fix a “critical” staffing issue that put patrol officers at risk and created long waits for citizens in crisis. His plan would dismantle the specialized units to put 30 officers back on the streets.

One supervisor told The Gazette none of his officers were ever left to respond alone to an in-progress call and none told him they felt unsafe on the job. The supervisor did agree that sometimes officers have to wait for backup but said that would happen anyway.

“It’s a reality of the city’s growing size,” the supervisor said.

Carey said he hoped the impact would be minimal and that the units’ work would be absorbed by patrol.

“Candidly, what I give up is some of the great proactive work that our impact team and gang unit has done, and I’m not going to diminish that,” Carey said. “It’s really, really good work that now I’m going to ask those same officers to bring that expertise back to patrol, still do that work, but balance it with running and managing a sector.”

Some officers aren’t as optimistic.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, one ranking officer said the demands of the patrol job make it nearly impossible to perform the level of policing behind the units’ statistics. Now, the focus will be on reactive policing, he said.

“We’re going to document crimes. That’s all we’re doing,” the officer said.

Officials do not disagree with the importance of the units. The reorganization wasn’t personal, they say.

It had “nothing to do with the outstanding work these units were doing,” and everything to do with officer safety, said Colorado Springs Police Protective Association President Mike Singels.

“This was very painful for the chief to do,” Singels said. “It took us years to build up these specialized units. But it was my job to tell the chief — and it wasn’t anything he didn’t already know — that, hey, it’s hitting a critical point. It’s not safe.”

Carey supported that view in a later interview, saying he “simply can’t afford to have 16 cops on impact teams and four gang cops. I can’t afford to do that when I’m not making it to priority-one calls for service in time.”

Other officers also testified to the job’s growing danger. They respond to dangerous calls alone and “it is only a matter of time” until an officer or a citizen is killed, they said.

They lauded the reorganization as a step in the right direction.